April 14, 2021
The SkySweeper robot, designed by Nick Morozovsky in the UCSD Coordinated Robotics Lab, has won a “Best of What’s New” award in Popular Science. Skysweeper is a simple V-shaped robotic design for power line inspection tasks. It has a motor-driven “elbow” in the middle, and "hands" equipped with clamps that open and close to move down a line in an inchworm motion. The clamps can also release from the line one at a time and swing in a hand-over-hand motion, allowing the robot to swing past cable support points. For the full story, click here and here.